Colon separated values - reports and charts

Question

Data from a checkbox item is stored in a column separated by colons.
When users try to use the report builder function to chart it is not grouping as we expected.
For example the column contains the following rows:
A:B:C
A:B
C
C
We want the sum of distinct values. For example
A = 2
B = 2
C = 3
Instead we get:
A:B:C = 1
A:B =1
C =2
How can we acheive this?
Nan

Answer 1

Hi,
Checkbox selections (and multiselect list selections as well) are, as you say, stored as colon-delimited strings. This is fine for storing the data but, as you have seen, it is not particularly good for displaying the user's selections. You would need to "explode" the strings into actual values. How you do this will depend on the output you need.
For example, taking the "A:B:C" string as an example, if you only need to know the sum that each represent, you could do that in your SQL statement:
SELECT ..
CASE WHEN ':' || XXXX || ':' LIKE '%:A:%' THEN 2 ELSE 0 END +
CASE WHEN ':' || XXXX || ':' LIKE '%:B:%' THEN 2 ELSE 0 END +
CASE WHEN ':' || XXXX || ':' LIKE '%:C:%' THEN 3 ELSE 0 END ABC_SUM
FROM ...(where XXXX is the column that contains the string)
But, if you need to see A, B and C within the report itself, you may be better off splitting the string into three columns:
SELECT ..
CASE WHEN ':' || XXXX || ':' LIKE '%:A:%' THEN 'A' ELSE NULL END ITEM_A,
CASE WHEN ':' || XXXX || ':' LIKE '%:B:%' THEN 'B' ELSE NULL END ITEM_B,
CASE WHEN ':' || XXXX || ':' LIKE '%:C:%' THEN 'C' ELSE NULL END ITEM_C,
CASE WHEN ':' || XXXX || ':' LIKE '%:A:%' THEN 2 ELSE 0 END +
CASE WHEN ':' || XXXX || ':' LIKE '%:B:%' THEN 2 ELSE 0 END +
CASE WHEN ':' || XXXX || ':' LIKE '%:C:%' THEN 3 ELSE 0 END ABC_SUM
FROM ...If, however, the values relate to records in other tables (for example, the user has selected EMPNO values - which is stored in the string - but you want to show actual employee names), then you would probably have to join your original SQL to the second table to display the values and/or allow the user to filter by a value. But that would make it more complicated and may mean that you end up with more than one row per main record.
Andy